Capitalist Corner

November 08, 2007

Single Issue Candidates

Kevin Drum republishes bits of an interview with Tom Tancredo showing that Tancredo sees himself as playing a political role that has nothing to do with being elected president, and everything to do with acting as an extremist pole that can help pull the center of the immigration debate far to the right. Kevin wonders why liberals don't do this, and concludes "the answer is talk radio. Our extremists don't succeed in redefining the playing field because there's no institutional infrastructure behind them that converts lunacy into political pressure."

I'm not sure that's true. Forgetting for a moment that the blogs now serve a pretty similar purpose, Tancredo has not been engaged in an organizing effort. His presidential campaign is not about using talk radio to create a standalone movement capable of pressuring the Republican Party. Rather, he's using the structure of the primary season as his "institutional infrastructure" to force concessions from the presidential candidates. A Democrat could easily do that.

One of my real hopes for this election was that John Kitzhaber, the former governor of Oregon, would mount a single issue candidacy on health care. He's a former ER doctor with a Brian Schweitzer-like Western charm, and his whole focus is now on federal health reform. For whatever reason, he didn't take the bait, though there was a fair amount of pressure on him to do so. Luckily, Edwards, to some degree, stepped into that role, even if he didn't do it in a single-issue way. But this stuff works just fine on the Democratic side.

Comments

So Kitzhaber & Edwards are the ideological equivalents of Tom Tancredo? Their health care & economic planks are radically out of the mainstream, with base support of maybe 25% of the party. UHC is not leftish. Nationalizing Health Care and the complete destruction of the insurance industry and private health care might be left enough to move the Overton Window. Maybe.

Give me a break. Neither the Democratic Party of the liberal blogosphere provides and support for views left of center-center-left. See previous post, substitute "phony leftists" for "phony centrists."

Posted by: bob mcmanus | Nov 8, 2007 11:37:25 AM

A Dodd staffer told me this is precisely what they're trying to do with their campaign.

I'm from Oregon, and have always wished that our former Gov Kitzhaber a) had a big enough ego to be compelled to run for President and b) didn't have young kids that he rightly values spending time with.

Kitz would make a great presidential candidate, and a great president.

This is also a failing of Kucinich. Here he is, far left on all sorts of issues (and correct on at least some of them), but he never really attacks the frontrunners no matter how far to the right they run.

I'm a Californian transplanted to DC, and surprisingly at peace with it. Or at least I was till it started getting colder. Job-wise, I'm the staff writer for The American Prospect. In the past, I've written for the Washington Monthly, the LA Weekly, The LA Times, The New Republic, Slate, The New York Sun, and the Gadflyer. I'm a damn good cook. No, really. Want to know more? E-mail, I'm friendly.